ZDay
by bohemianyc
Summary: Santana and Brittany facing the unthinkable - and the inevitable - in post-apocalyptic Zombieland.  Focused more on the characters dealing with present and past extreme situations than on the undead.
1. Chapter 1: Bitten

"San… I'm sorry… I'm so, so sorry… I didn't mean…"

I stared in horror, unable to process any of her words. Unable to really process what I was seeing, even though I'd seen it hundreds of times.

No words. She was crying, but for the first time, I didn't know what to do.

"Does it hurt?" My voice was choked and raspy.

She nodded.

I realized I was crying, and now I _really_ didn't know what to do. I just stared at the torn and bitten flesh on her wrist, oozing that telltale discolored pus.

I didn't think it would ever come this close to us. I used to think I was hardcore enough for the both of us that this would never happen.

***Z***

You put up with a lot of shit in Zombieland. But there are some upsides, too.

Like, no more Cheerios uniforms. I can wear leather jackets and knee-high boots and look like a total badass.

And I get to drive a boss G55 in matte black. That was a particularly nice find in Chicago.

And no one can pull me over for carrying a shitload of guns in the back. Or for driving 120 on the highway.

But the absolute, hands-down best part of Zombieland is that every night there is mind-blowing, post-apocalyptic sex. You never know which night might be your last.

I smiled at the blonde lying next to me in the back seat and kissed her forehead. She wrinkled her nose and buried her face in my shoulder. How she could stay so fucking adorable when the undead wanted to make us a combo meal was beyond me.

"Five more minutes."

I lived for minutes like this. Minutes where you could forget you were in the back of your stolen Mercedes with double barrels and Uzis at your feet, parked on the side of the highway in the middle of the desert in Nevada. Minutes where it was just you and the girl you adored, sore and naked, wrapped in the one blanket you kept in your car.

I rolled over on top of her, pressing my forehead against hers with a playful grin as she squeezed her eyes shut. "No more minutes," I said.

"What's the big rush?" She squinted up at me, capturing my lips in a quick kiss. "Big date waiting for you in Vegas?"

"We already passed Vegas, remember?"

"Mm. Barely. You wouldn't even let me try that card-counting thing."

"You want to go back and count cards with a bunch of zombies?"

She grinned. I dipped my head to kiss her again, but she giggled and turned away. "Brush your teeth first," she said, sliding one of her legs between mine, pulling it back as soon as I tried to grind against it.

I groaned and rolled off her. "You're such a tease."

Britt wrapped her arms around my shoulders and pressed herself against my back as I brushed my teeth. She rested her chin at the crook of my neck. "You think we could find a place somewhere where there aren't any zombies, and just… live?"

I shrugged.

"Like, a house somewhere far away from everyone else. And with no people around, so there will be no zombies. And we can have a garden, and a fireplace, and rain on Sundays…"

I spat out the window and handed her the toothbrush. I held her face between my hands, running my thumbs over her freckled cheeks. There was so much sad hope in her baby blues. I'd tried not to promise her things I knew I couldn't follow through on, but when Zombieland sucked all the hope out of you, you needed something to hold on to—no matter how far-fetched—or you'd lose your mind. "And hot chocolate when it rains," I said.

Her eyes glimmered, and she kissed me like she'd never get another chance.

I pulled away. "I love you, baby," I said, "but you need to brush your teeth, too."

***Z***

"San?"

"We'll figure it out," I finally managed. "We'll fix it."

She smiled sadly and shook her head, handing me her shotgun. "You can't fix everything."


	2. Chapter 2: Patient Zero

"You can't fix everything."

***Z***

"San?" Brittany called from the next room.

I scooped the pulp out of a tomato and lobbed it into the garbage disposal. "Yeah?"

"Are you a gentleman?"

I frowned, chopping the tomato into tiny bits and tossing them in the bowl of guac. "I'm a girl, Britt."

"Oh."

I grabbed the bowl and a bag of Tostitos and plopped on the couch next to her. "Why?"

"Because of your boobs and pussy."

"No, I know why I'm—" I shook my head. "Why were you asking if I'm a gentleman?"

She held up a copy of her favorite Marilyn movie. "Because it says 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.'"

"I can't tell if you're joking."

She grinned cheekily. "I'm always serious."

"Do you want to watch that tonight?"

"Yes." She snuggled into my side and dipped a chip in the guacamole. "I already put it in the DVD player."

I flipped on the TV – a reporter was sitting behind a desk, glaring sternly at the camera. "Who watches CNN in your house?"

"My sister."

"–_last night. Sources confirm this 'Patient Zero' consumed the infected burrito–"_

"Ew," I flipped down to get to the video channel. On the way by, every basic cable station was reporting on this "Patient Zero" shit. After hearing the phrase repeated at least three times, I knew Britt would ask about it soon, so I stopped on the Channel 5 news.

"He looks like a zombie," Brittany said, examining the photo next to the reporter.

"That's nasty. I'm totally not hungry anymore." Guacamole looked especially unappealing now that I'd seen this dude with a greenish tint who looked like he belonged in a casket.

"At least you didn't make burritos," Brittany said. "I wonder what was in the one he ate."

"_Witnesses have reported that Patient Zero appears to be frothing at the mouth, breaking out in a blistered rash, and attempting to bite anyone who approaches. He was admitted to Odessa Union Medical Center this afternoon for treatment."_

"Sounds like rabies. I'm seriously going to throw up right now," I said, quickly turning to the channel where the DVD menu was already playing.

"Do you think he'll be okay?"

"Please. With modern medicine? They'll fix that shit so fast."

"Too bad – I've kind of always wanted a zombie apocalypse."

"Me too," I agreed absently.

"You'd be so hot with a gun."

"Mhm, that's right," I grinned.

***Z***

That was our first brush with the plague. That was when Odessa was so far away, too far to matter. When the idea of Brittany in full leather shooting up the undead with two handguns turned sideways was a huge turn on instead of a terrifying reality. Well, it's still a turn on, but it was kind of always an unspoken wish that it would stay only in my fantasies.

That's the kind of moment you look back on and think, Couldn't we have figured it out? Couldn't someone have just shot Patient Zero in the head and saved us all this trouble? Fuck, if I could do any one thing differently in my whole eighteen years of existence, I'd go back to that night when we turned on the TV, and instead of watching Marilyn Monroe act like an airhead for ninety minutes, I'd get in the car and drive straight down to Texas and take a bazooka to Zero's face. Well, maybe a shotgun. I don't think I could actually lift a bazooka.

I bet a lot of people have thought that over the past few months. And if there are any real people left, I bet they're thinking that now, too.

But probably not as much as I am right now, as I stare hopelessly at the gun hanging limply in Brittany's grasp.

"You promised me," she said. "Remember?"


	3. Chapter 3: Getting Caught

I shook my head. It was the kind of promise you made when you didn't think you'd ever have to follow through on it. Or if you thought you'd be the one to get bitten first, and if she couldn't do it, you could always blow your own head off. But the idea of Brittany shooting herself made my stomach lurch, and I grabbed the gun swiftly. I laid it on the kitchen counter next to a bowl of guacamole dip.

"I made you guacamole," I said quietly.

She stepped closer and cupped my cheek. "You just scooped that out of a jar."

I tried to laugh but it got stuck halfway out and ended up a choked sob. "We were doing so good, though," I said.

"I'm so sorry…"

I buried my face in her shoulder.

***Z***

"God, look at her thighs."

Brittany tilted her head. "They're kind of…"

"Huge?" I flipped to the next page in our senior yearbook. The books had just come in that day, but only nerds spent time looking through them at school. "Probably because she was already packing on the baby weight." I scoffed. "You'd think after Quinn they would've been a little more careful about spreading their legs for anything with a dick."

"I heard it was Sam's, and when she told him he proposed and she punched him in the face."

"Is that how he got a black eye? I thought Puck nailed him in a locker room fight."

Brittany giggled. "Nailed him?"

"I meant—well, they probably did that too. Makes more sense."

"At least we don't have to worry about babies," she said, leaning into me.

I kissed her shoulder. "Not yet, anyway."

She eyed me skeptically. "You can't get me pregnant, right?"

I laughed. "No."

"Good."

"Want me to get you not-pregnant right now?" I pushed her back on the bed and straddled her waist, raising my eyebrows playfully.

Her eyes sparkled and she pulled me down into a bruising kiss, pulling my bottom lip between her teeth. I slid my hand beneath her Cheerios top and traced my fingers across her abdomen, delighting at the way her muscles quivered. She whimpered and raised her hips.

"Santana – are you – holy mother of Jesus!"

I scrambled off Brittany so fast I nearly fell off the bed. My mother, looking the most frazzled I'd _ever_ seen, stood in my doorway. A button was missing on her blouse so it was open a little too far; her hair that had been perfectly blow-dried when she left for work this morning was unkempt ("fly-aways" would have been way too nice a term); she was missing one of her pumps, and her ankle – I was pretty sure…

"Mom, are you bleeding?"

She opened her mouth a few times, still staring at us. My whole body felt like I'd been submerged in a lava pit in hell. The kind where they cover the surface in gasoline and light it on fire, so even if you make it out of the lava, you're still fucking screwed.

"With the way my day is going, I feel like I should have expected this," she said faintly, backing out of the room and teetering unevenly down the stairs.

I couldn't move.

"San?" Brittany said quietly.

I stared blankly at the empty doorway. "She's going to kick me out. She's going to kill me, and then she's going to kick me out of the house."

"If you're already dead, does that matter?"

Not even Brittany's naively blunt charm could help, though.

"I have to talk to her," I said. "I have to tell her it was just…"

"Just what?"

I turned to Britt hopelessly. "Fuck. I don't know. I don't know how to fix this."

"I don't think it's broken," she said.

"Are you kidding me? Did you see her face?"

"She looked kind of homeless. Plus, I'm sure she already knew about us."

"I don't think so."

"We're about as subtle as a freight train."

"Do you even know what that is?"

"Don't get mad at me just because you're scared of her."

"I have to say something."

"You could tell her we were practicing for Cheerios."

"Britt, that doesn't make any sense. Besides, then she'd think Cheerios was some huge lezzie orgy all the time."

"If you're just going to be mean when I try to help then I'm going home." She lifted the window open, but stopped with one foot on the sill and cocked her head to the side. "Why is Patches running around on your front lawn?"

What the fuck was the homeless guy from the QuikE Mart doing at my house? "Is he… drooling?" I said.

"At least he's not barking," Brittany said.

***Z***

That was about two weeks after Patient Zero. I'd seen a couple things on the news since, but mostly by accident when I was walking through the living room after dinner and my parents had the TV on. Kids talked about it at school, but the kind of kids who talked about it weren't people who would dare talk to me. Except maybe Puck, who was wrapped up in the idea of a zombie invasion and kept telling me he always knew it would happen, and how did I feel now about making fun of him for all those nights he played Resident Evil instead of letting me suck his cock.

The thing that really sucked, though, was that Puck was one of the first of our friends to go, about a week later. I think he may have forgotten that you don't build up immunity and win bonus lives for killing the most zombies. You either get a couple extra moments of your own life, or lose the last minutes of it.

Like me, my mom also thought the zombie panic was a load of bullshit, until the day she walked in on me and Britt. We had nothing to do with her revelation, but it turns out she'd been freaking out that I'd be coming home while Patches was terrorizing our front lawn. He'd chased her down like a fucking cheetah and _bit_ her. Bit. The police came and tried to cart him off, but he was, like, viciously biting them, too. It was fucking _gross_. Then one of the officers put a bullet through his head while I covered Brittany's ears and pushed her face into my shoulder. My mom stared at us with this unreadable Stepford expression, before announcing quietly that she was going to the hospital. She didn't come back.

That was when it got personal, and I was actually thankful that I'd dated Puck long enough for him to take me to the firing range (not a typical date, I know – but in his defense, I'm pretty sure that was when he'd awarded himself lezbro status, even if I hadn't acknowledged it yet). Plus, clones of Patches were multiplying in Lima – it's a small town, that shit spread quick – so Brittany and I took off, keeping our escape to just the two of us. The fewer people you had to worry about getting bitten and turning on you, the better. All I wanted was to be where the undead weren't, which proved harder and harder as time went on. And beyond that? I didn't have a plan.

I squeezed Brittany tighter and kissed her neck, trying not to look at her mangled wrist. "I have a plan," I mumbled against her skin.

"Uh, yeah," she said, as though it were obvious, and reached for the gun again. I pushed her hand away.

"A different one," I said.

"What, you want me to rip you to shreds in a few hours?"

"No. Something else."

She tightened her arms around me. "I think we're running out of options," she said.

I shook my head, trembling. "This can't be all there is."


	4. Chapter 4: Follow You Down

"You know that song?"

"I don't know, do I?" She frowned.

"You do… The one… it's at the end of that Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey movie."

"The treasure hunting one with the bunnies? That was hot."

"No, the other one."

"Oh yeah – I love that song." She smiled, and for a second we forgot everything. But then she frowned again. "I don't get it, though."

***Z***

I swerved the G-wagon to avoid a charred fender. I glanced at Brittany, who was staring at two dead bodies in some grass between the sidewalk and road.

"Hey," I said, drawing her attention back in the car. She squeezed my hand.

"Maybe we can go to Mexico," she said. "Or Canada."

"I think there are zombies everywhere," I said.

"Oh." She turned back to the window. "What about Hawaii?"

I played with her blond tresses, glancing between her and the road. "We're gonna be okay," I said. "Promise."

"Don't do that," she said.

I pulled my hand back. "Sorry."

"No—I mean don't promise that. I know you hate breaking promises." She intertwined our fingers.

"We are gonna be okay, though," I said. "We'll find a place, just like you want. I read that zombies don't do well in the cold, maybe we can find someone's cabin in the mountains somewhere."

She smiled. "You read about zombies?"

"Well… yeah."

"When?"

"Doesn't matter."

Her grin widened. "It was before they were real, wasn't it."

"No."

"I can tell 'cause you're all embarrassed."

"I'm not."

She hummed triumphantly and looked back out the window. "I'm hungry," she said.

"Wheat Thins in the back."

"I want an apple," she said sadly.

"Apple juice?"

She wrinkled her nose. "Juice doesn't crunch."

I sighed. "Wheat Thins do."

She rolled her eyes in an unspoken _San, you're being kind of annoying._

I pressed my lips together and laid my foot on the gas. "Next grocery store we'll get you some dried apple chips or something."

"It's not the same."

"I know it's not the same, Britt! I'm sorry. I don't know what you want me to do, okay? Apples went bad weeks ago. Do you want a brown apple with maggots in it? Great. Fine. It's yours. We'll get some of those at the next store, too."

She folded her arms and leaned her head against the window.

"There are sick freaks out there slobbering over our brains, and you're pouting because you can't have a fucking apple. Jesus Christ." I glared at the road and gripped the steering wheel so tightly my fingers ached.

"You don't have to be so mean."

Shit. I breathed shakily and counted to thirty. In high school when someone pissed me off, my therapist (aka my dad) had told me to count to ten. But I'd realized it wasn't nearly long enough – how are you supposed to calm your shit in ten seconds? At least with thirty I could start to breathe evenly again, even if I wasn't actually calm. "I'm sorry."

"I'm still mad at you."

Don't be mad at me, I wanted to say. We don't have time for that. But hearing her say that felt so _normal._ Like we were driving to the movies in Lima during the summer and I'd just ranted about wanting to shove Wheels into a shark tank. I leaned back against the headrest and looked at her with a sudden foolish grin. A normal grin.

"Why are you smiling?"

I bit my lip. "I love you," I said.

"Don't think you're getting off that easy," she said, but I could see she wanted to smile, too.

***Z***

I raised my eyes, waiting for her to get it.

Slowly, her frown deepened, then her eyebrows shot up and she shook her head, taking a step back. "Nuh-uh. No way."

"Anywhere you go," I sang.

"No," she said. "I'm not going to let you."

"B," I pleaded quietly.

"You know why? Because I know you don't want to be a zombie, and I don't want to be a zombie, either. I don't want to eat people and have messy hair all the time. Plus, zombies are stupid."

"I'm not going to shoot you."

"San," she grabbed my forearms. I hated her desperation. I hated her tears. "_You promised me._ And if you can't, I'll do it myself."


	5. Chapter 5: Hollywood Hills

"I need you to do this for me," she said. "Like… a present. Pretend you're giving me a present."

I just shook my head, trying so fucking hard not to cry, but I could feel my face screwing up.

"Don't cry," she said tenderly, running her fingers through my hair. I knew it scared her when I cried, and I wanted desperately to stop, wiping my cheeks violently, but I just ended up sobbing into my forearm and collapsing against her.

***Z***

"You're a little bit scary right now," Brittany said as I pulled the trigger again and giggled like a maniac.

"Oh, come on," I said, letting another round loose from our position on a third-floor balcony at the Standard. A zombie below us, who'd been scouring the trash like a raccoon, reeled with the blowback of the bullets and left his arm and a good chunk of his shoulder on the pavement.

"Did you have to do that?"

I rolled my eyes. "Fine." And with a shot to the head and a final screech, the creature dropped in the middle of Sunset Boulevard. I couldn't help but smile a little. Fucker was _seriously_ dead now. "Happy now?"

She shrugged. "I know you like to let off steam, but I'm a little worried about you."

I rested my gun against the railing. "At least… we finally get to see Hollywood, right?"

I'd realized this was Brittany's dream the summer before kindergarten. I was at the beach with my mom, and the little blonde girl and her slightly older brother were swimming circles around me in the water, just staring at me, but not saying anything. That afternoon, I found her a little ways down the beach and kicked over the stupid mounds of sand she was building next to her brother's more traditional sand castle, getting sand in her eyes, and she cried because I'd knocked over the Hollywood Hills and now all the stars would be homeless. I didn't understand why she thought stars would be living in hills, but she explained that they were famous people, not the kind that lived in the sky. And because she was sniffling and my mom was glaring at me, I helped her build the dumb hills back up again. I helped her make new Hollywood Hills every day for the rest of the summer.

Brittany leaned her head on my shoulder and stared at the empty lot across the street, but I could tell that wasn't what she was actually seeing. "When do we get to go to the mountains?"

"You want to drive through the Hills?" I said. "We can see where all the celebrities live. Lived."

"No. I mean the cold mountains. Where we'll be safe and have a garden and a little Eskimo puppy."

I'm pretty sure my heart broke then, which she never would have known if my voice didn't crack when I tried to respond. "Right now if you want, babe."

She nodded and kissed my neck. "I do."

***Z***

I leaned up so I could press my forehead against hers. We stood like that for I don't know how long, just breathing each other. I tilted my jaw forward slightly to capture her lips, but she pulled back.

"San, don't."

"Trust me," I said.

"I'm not dumb," she said. "I know what you're doing."

"Please, B," I said, my voice breaking. "Don't you trust me?"

She nodded, but pulled away when I tried again. "I trust you, but I don't think you're making good choices right now. It's like you're drunk on sad."

"What?"

"Like, you're not drunk on tequila, you're drunk on sad."

I choked out a laugh that spilled fresh tears down my cheeks. This time I didn't try to kiss her, just wrapped her in a tight hug and pressed my face into her chest. "Only you," I said. "You get… you're… and you can still make me laugh."

"This is it, right?" she said. And then, in a rare moment of articulate clarity: "Crying would be a terrible way to end something so beautiful."

Which, of course, made me cry even harder.


	6. Chapter 6: First Time

**A/N: For those of you who are interested enough to put a little dedication into this & take out the spaces, since FanFiction won't let me post a link or an image, here's a li'l somethin' somethin' I photoshopped together of the lovely, zombie-slaying ladies: http:/ / i1221 . photobucket . com/albums/dd479/bohemianyc/brittana_zombies . jpg**

"I just don't get it," I managed. I was blubbering at this point, unable to say anything like a normal person. Like some sap at the end of _The Notebook _who thought the world was so beautiful and so sad, and why did they have to go and die in such a fucking perfect way. I wanted to scream and pull the refrigerator out of the wall and throw the microwave into the non-working TV in the living room. "What did I do wrong? When did I… I should have been with you," I said. "I should have—"

Brittany placed her hand over my mouth. "It doesn't matter," she said.

I shoved her hand away. "Yes it does!"

"It doesn't matter what you could have done. It happened. Why are you trying to make it worse?"

"I'm not – how are you even so goddamn calm right now!"

***Z***

"That was so fucking hot," I breathed against her neck.

She shivered. "Really? It felt kind of…"

"So hot," I grinned.

Her skin shone with a thin layer of sweat, and her legs were still trembling slightly. "I know they're already dead, but it still seems kind of awful to shoot them," she said, unable to look away from the carnage surrounding us.

"Don't feel bad," I said. "It's you or them. And I'm glad it wasn't you. Come on." We stepped over the fallen zombies into the supermarket.

I picked up an avocado and squeezed; when the outer shell caved beneath my fingers, I quickly dropped it on the floor. "Ew."

"The apples are still good!" Brittany grinned, biting into one.

I eyed the yogurt suspiciously as we passed it, and Brittany grabbed a box of Ho-Ho's. I raised my eyebrows. "Seriously?"

"What? It's not like Coach Sylvester's weighing us anymore," she said. "I've always wanted to try them."

"Well, they're disgusting. Plus, I don't want them to get in the way of these." I pushed her tank top up and traced her beautiful abs, leaning up to kiss the underside of her jaw, her cheek, the corner of her mouth. She giggled and turned into the kiss.

"Killing zombies makes you horny," she said against my mouth.

"Mhm," I said. "Especially when you do it. That was the first time I've seen you shoot a gun. So. Fucking. Hot." I punctuated the last few words with kisses trailing down her neck. I teased the flesh over her pulse point between my teeth and sucked gently. She let out a breathy whimper and dropped the Ho-Ho's so she could tangle a hand in my hair. I smiled triumphantly.

"San." The barest of exhales. I glanced up at her – head tilted back, bottom lip pulled between her teeth, eyelids fluttering closed. I clenched my thighs and bit my own lip.

"Mm?" I replied, slipping a hand underneath her shirt and brushing my fingers along the outline of her bra. She whimpered again, pleadingly, and pushed herself against me. I barely swallowed my own groan at the feeling of her teeth nipping my earlobe, her breasts on mine, her thigh pressed to my center. "Hey Britt?" I whispered seductively. I always had one kickass bedroom voice, even in the middle of the cookies-and-chips aisle.

"Yes," she said breathily, panting slightly.

I pressed myself even closer to her, delighting in the way her breath quickened and she refused to break eye contact. God, when they went dark like that… it was like she was fucking you with her eyes. "Let's get these instead." I said, pulling a bag of Pop Chips from behind her and stepping away, continuing down the aisle with a smirk as though we hadn't almost totally just got it on in front of Little Debbie and the Hostess snacks.

She groaned loudly, and after a moment I heard her steps behind me. "That was so…"

"Hot?"

"Mean. So mean."

***Z***

"How are you so goddamn fucking calm?" I gripped her shirt tightly in my sweaty hands.

"Do I have another choice?" she asked genuinely, frowning a little in confusion. "I mean…" lifting her wrist to her face, she worried her bottom lip and looked at it with sad eyes. Finally, she kissed my forehead tenderly.

In the back of my mind, I guess I knew it would happen eventually, but it was shoved so deep under the picture of me and Britt living in this random cabin in the Sierra Nevadas somewhere west of Lake Tahoe that I'd kind of forgotten about its reality. When we were out there, it was like zombies were just some bad dream that we were trying to get over. Like Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees, where you're scared enough to sleep with a baseball bat for a couple nights, just in case, but when day after day of safety goes by, you push them deeper into your memories until you mostly forget them.

Mostly.

I turned Brittany's wrist and stared into the face of reality.

"It's okay," she said with a tiny, scared smile. "It was starting to get really cold up here anyway."


	7. Chapter 7: Trampoline Sex

_"It was starting to get really cold up here anyway."_

I tore my eyes away from the bite. "What?"

"I never liked winter. You can't do all the fun summer things when it's snowing outside."

I traced her jawline. "Like what?"

"Like pool parties and beach volleyball and zip-lining and trampoline sex."

I exhaled what could have been a laugh if I'd given it a chance. If the world weren't fucking ending right in front of me. "I love you," I said.

***Z***

"Do you wanna make out?"

"Britt, there are too many people here."

"Oh." There was a brief pause as she looked down through the water, then back up at me. "Do you wanna go upstairs and make out?"

I laughed. "You're adorable," I whispered.

She grinned and ran her fingers through my hair.

"Britt…"

"I'm just playing with your hair," she said. She was close enough for me to smell the alcohol on her breath. "It's soft like Charity."

I smiled. "You're getting chlorine in it."

"We are in a pool," she said, in that _and-people-think-I'm-the-dumb-one?_ tone.

I couldn't stop staring at her crystal blue eyes. I bit my lip, starting to rethink my too-many-people rule, as she dragged her fingernails gently across my scalp. I shivered despite the heated water.

"Everybody's drunk," she whispered in my ear, causing my eyes to fall shut. The statement was reinforced by a burly linebacker cannonballing into the deep end of Puck's pool amidst raucous cheers from wasted footballers. Puck's end-of-the-summer kegger was always well-populated, crazy fun, and highly regretted the next morning. "And we're drunk. No one will care. They'll think it's hot. And they'll forget tomorrow morning."

"I don't think…" I trailed off in a sigh when Britt nipped my earlobe. She smiled against my neck and kissed her way down my jaw, hovering right in front of my lips.

"You don't have to," she said.

"What?"

"Think. You don't have to think."

I couldn't stand having her that close, unmoving. I leaned forward and captured her lips in mine, tugging her bottom lip between my teeth. She whimpered and traced her fingers down my stomach. I moaned a little into her mouth, but was suddenly brought back to reality by renewed cheering. I pulled away to see an increasing amount of the partygoers turning to see what the fuss was about.

Puck swaggered over and dropped into the water next to us. "You girls need a hand?"

"Does it look like we need a hand?" I snapped back, intentionally slurring more than normal to make it abundantly clear how wasted I was (no one needed to know I was operating on only a couple beers).

He grinned obnoxiously. "Looks like you're about to get one."

"Fuck off, Puckerman."

"Mm, yeah, keep it coming."

Britt giggled. "That's what she said."

I rolled my eyes. "You two are about as mature as a pair of prepubescent boys."

"Pre… what?"

"Never mind, B."

An empty beer can bounced off Puck's head. "What the fuck, dude!" he shouted.

Karofsky, looking like an angry bear, stood at the edge of the pool. "Puckerman, seriously? What the hell? They were giving us a show until you jumped in!"

"They want a show?" Britt murmured to me.

"What? B, no. Don't even think about it."

Ever the performer, Britt grinned. "Think about it," she whispered. "A bunch of people watching… that's kind of a turn on."

"No."

"Fine. Can we at least…?"

"Okay."

The benefit of being best friends with someone for twelve years was the mind reading that came along with it. I grabbed Brittany's hand and pulled her up the steps out of the pool, to much groaning and complaining from the boys. I could practically feel Brittany smiling; unable to resist, she rested a hand on my ass as we walked out of the garden toward the street where my car was parked.

We'd barely made it past the fence when she whirled me around and started kissing me again. She nipped my neck and I groaned.

"Babe—not here—" I managed.

"Nobody's watching," she murmured against my skin.

"Home—"

We didn't make it all the way home. We barely made it two blocks and I had to stop the car.

That night, tangled in her limbs on the trampoline in the backyard after we finally did make it back to her house, staying outside because we were afraid to open any doors or windows until we were sober, I told her I loved her. I knew she knew, but I'd never actually said it before. It freaked the fuck out of me. I wanted to swallow the words as soon as they'd left my mouth, but by then it was too late, and I just laid there terrified, hoping maybe it had been quiet enough that she hadn't heard. My ears were pounding so loud I wasn't sure I'd even heard myself, and I began to think maybe I hadn't said anything at all, and just when my heart started to slow down a little, the corners of her lips curled up in a little smile. She traced a pattern carefully on my bare shoulder. Punctuating it with a gentle scratch of her fingernail, she looked up at me through her eyelashes. I held my breath and my heart went wild again. What did a heart attack feel like? Was I about to die? Confess love, then die. Great. Perfect. If this was how "I love you's" went down I was never doing it again. Assuming I lived long enough to get the opportunity.

"You're turning red," she said.

I remembered to breathe again when she kissed me softly.

***Z***

"I love you, too," she replied immediately.

I pulled my lower lip between my teeth. "Remember the first time I said that to you?"

She nodded. "Of course. On the trampoline after Puck's party." There was a dull flicker of in her eyes at the mention of his name.

"You didn't say it back," I said.

She smiled, and I couldn't help but smile a little, too.

"That was the scariest thing that's ever happened to me."

Her smile turned bitter as she eyed the bite on her arm. "Until now."

I almost agreed. "No," I said, pushing her wrist down. "Even now."


	8. Chapter 8: Closer

She pulled me toward the door. "I want to do something."

Hesitantly hopeful, I stumbled after her. She hopped into the passenger's side of the G-wagon, reaching across the car to crank the ignition, and I slid into the driver's side, turning to her expectantly. "Where are we going?" I said.

"Nowhere." She plugged our iPod into the dock on the dashboard and scrolled through a playlist. She tapped a song with her thumb and grinned at me. Three bars in and my heart dropped through my stomach.

***Z***

Hairbrush microphones were stupid. So was hairography, according to Coach. But with Brittany waving one hand spastically above her head and clutching her ceramic round brush in front of her face with the other, whipping her hair and wearing boy briefs and a thin tank, _stupid_ was the last thing from my mind.

Hilarious. Fun. Absurd. Infectious.

I grabbed her pink hairbrush and jumped along. "_You're toxic, I'm slipping under_," we sang off-key so we could compete loudly with the blaring music.

It was the summer before freshman year, and while Quinn reminded us repeatedly that high-schoolers didn't do immature things like this, and we were practically already in high school since we had JV Cheerios practice five days a week, Brittany reasoned we weren't technically there yet so we had all summer to get it out of our systems. And what Coach (and Quinn) didn't know about our singing and hair flipping wouldn't hurt.

The next song didn't involve nearly as much whiplash, but we jumped around unnecessarily anyway. Brittany spun around and her foot caught on a discarded pair of sweatpants on the floor – she grabbed me for balance but we both ended up on the bed in a fit of giggles. She recovered immediately, rolling backwards and onto her knees before jumping onto her feet and bouncing on the bed. I rolled out of the danger zone and onto the floor, grinning up at her as her hair flew out and she kicked her heels up with each twirl. "_I'm on the outside looking in, closer to you, I want to get closer to you, then I would know for sure, closer to you._"

She laughed and leapt down, grabbing my hands and dancing me in a circle. _"I imagine how you feel, tell me the only thing that's real,_" she sang, and I leaned up and kissed her. And then we froze.

I didn't know why I did it.

I knew we'd stopped dancing as the song finished.

I knew Brittany let go of my hands.

I knew I couldn't move even though I desperately, desperately wanted to jump out the window and run all the way to Canada.

I knew the next song started playing, but I couldn't hear it over the pounding rush in my ears.

And I knew Brittany was staring at me with blue eyes as wide as mine.

"I – I – I'm so sorry, I don't know why I did that. I didn't mean… let's pretend it didn't happen, 'kay?" I spluttered.

Brittany slowly brought her fingers up to trace her lips. God, I totally freaked her out.

"I'm just gonna—" I turned to leave, my hand on the doorknob, when—

"San?"

My fingers were shaking so I balled them into a fist around the front of my shirt.

"What about our sleepover?" Several long, frozen minutes passed, and I couldn't say anything. I heard her shift uncertainly, but I couldn't turn around. Finally— "No," she said.

I tensed my shoulders. "What," I whispered.

"I'm not gonna pretend it didn't happen."

And then all I knew was she was kissing me again, and it was soft and cautious and scared.

***Z***

"_All of our answers, question in time, don't let your fears try to tear us apart. I want to get closer to you, I'm on the outside looking in, Tell me our love is real, you know that I will understand._"

Her blue eyes weren't as wide as mine, but they were sad and terrified. And she wasn't singing this time, but I could hear her thirteen-year-old voice in the lyrics. I twisted a strand of her hair gently in my fingers and cupped her cheek.

Foolishly hopeful, I watched her. "Let's pretend it didn't happen."

She just smiled, pulling her sleeve down over her wrist and wincing a little. "Okay."


	9. Chapter 9: House Hunting

"You want to go for a drive or something?" My voice was hoarse.

She shook her head, never taking her eyes off mine. "Can we just sit here for a little bit?"

***Z***

"I wonder what it's like to make out with a zombie," Britt wondered.

"Ugh, B, no," I said. "He'd eat your face off."

"Yeah, but, if he didn't."

"It doesn't matter because you're not going to do it."

"I make out with a lot of people."

"Zombies aren't people."

"Are janitors people?"

I rolled my eyes. "Plus, if you made out with a zombie you'd turn into one."

"I thought they had to bite you."

"Usually they do. But Puck told me if you, like, mix with zombie fluids, or whatever, you get the virus."

"Puck told you? Or you read it in that book?" she teased.

"Whatever. Zombie sex is out, anyway."

The corners of her lips turned down. "Ew."

We were out in—fuck, I didn't know where. Maybe an hour ago I'd seen an exit for San Francisco, or maybe it was Sacramento, and maybe it was two hours ago, or twenty minutes—it didn't really matter. I'd avoided it. Cities were a death trap.

We'd seen no one for miles—not even the odd zombie tearing into a corpse on the median strip. I wanted to feel comforted, but mostly I was just unnerved. A ghost highway, ghost towns… it gets fucking lonely, even with Brittany around. I took the next exit and we ended up on a road that ran alongside a stream and through some huge ass trees.

"What's wrong?" Brittany said.

"Huh?"

"You sighed. Twice."

"Nothing's wrong." As soon as I said it, I couldn't help but laugh a little. Aside from the whole end-of-the-world thing, everything was A-fucking-OK.

I was always apprehensive about driving on one-lane roads, especially in the woods, because I had this irrational fear that a horde of the undead would be waiting for me in a Red-Rover-Red-Rover-esque line and I wouldn't be able to get past and they'd swarm the car and break the windows and eat us both. Britt didn't like one-lane roads in the woods because she was convinced we'd get attacked by a werewolf. I used to think that was stupid, and it was a pain in the ass whenever we went to Karofsky's cabin up by Port Clinton for summer weekends because it took me hours to talk her into going in the first place, and then I had to get her drunk fast so she'd forget where we were and we could have fun. A couple times I misjudged and we ended up in the second-floor guest bathroom with me holding her hair back as she retched into the toilet and the party raged downstairs. Not my proudest moments.

I still thought werewolves were a stupid idea, but every time I tried to make that argument, she'd tilt her head, raise her eyebrows, and say, "Santana. Zombies?"

"Let's go up there," she pointed to a narrow dirt road as we passed it.

"You think anything's up there?"

She shrugged. "It goes up the mountain. See? You can see it up there."

I pulled a U and launched the G-wagon up the road. "I hope this isn't just a logging road," I said.

It wasn't. The first house we passed was a one-story POS with so many cluttered deer statues and reflective globes and wind chimes in the yard that I physically twitched and pressed on the gas just a little harder. The second was a trailer. The third was a barn.

"Maybe we should try a different road," I said.

"No, keep going," Brittany said. "This is fun. It's like we're house shopping."

"I want to look at good houses, though. These all suck."

"What kind of house do you want?"

"I don't know, but not, like, a double-wide or anything. Something safe."

"I don't want a big one, though. They're too scary."

"My house was big," I said. "Did you think it was scary?"

"We spent most of our time in your room. I liked your room. It felt cozy, like a cave."

"Yeah, but what about when we were little?"

She shrugged. "I always got nervous before I went over. What about that one?"

I wrinkled my nose at the A-frame and kept driving. "I would rather live out of the car. Why'd you get nervous?"

"I thought I'd get lost somewhere in your house and nobody would be able to find me. Like when I got lost in the sewers over the summer."

"That was… I'm never leaving you alone again after that. I still can't…"

"It was okay."

"If my mom had let you come with us it never would have happened."

"Probably," she said indifferently. "I just would have gotten lost in Puerto Rican sewers instead, and I think they might be worse."

"What about that one?" I slowed down as we passed a cabin tucked back in the pines. "Maybe?"

"It's cute," she said. "But it doesn't have a garden."

"We could always plant one."

"That sounds like a lot of work."

I squeezed her hand. "Okay. Let's keep going."

***Z***

"I can't just sit here," I said. "It's killing me."

"Or me," she said.

"That's not funny."

"Sorry."

"I never should have left you alone," I said. "I told you I wouldn't. I promised."

She gently brushed a tear that had barely spilled onto my cheek. "Honey, it's not your fault," she said. "And you promised me something else, too, remember?"

I shook my head. Not because I didn't remember—because I refused to acknowledge the promise. "B," I pleaded.

"You never let me down, Santana. I'm not asking you to do this for you. I want you to do it for me."

"Don't lie. You're doing this for me."

She smiled. "Yeah, but if I told you that you wouldn't do it. I know how you think."

"Why the hell would I want to stick around if you're not here?"

"Pretty soon I won't be here anymore, whether or not you…. If I'm a zombie I won't be me," she said. "You can't just keep me around and think I'll get better. I know I won't."

Feeling like all the bones in my chest suddenly disintegrated, I grabbed her face and kissed her so hard my lips tingled with the collision.

"San!" She pushed me off, but it was too late. I ran my thumb across my lip and swiped my tongue across the pad, swallowing every last bit of her.

"There," I said. "Now it doesn't matter."


	10. Chapter 10: Almost Normal

She just stared at me, wordless and horrified. A Beach Boys song was next on the playlist, and far too cheery, so I tapped the iPod into silence.

"Why did you do that?" she whispered.

I shrugged.

"Why would you…"

"You're kidding, right?" I said.

"I don't want you to end up like –"

"Like what?"

"You don't want to be a zombie."

"No, and neither do you. But I'm not fucking sticking around here after you… or, whatever. I'm not doing it. It's just easier like this."

Her face was broken, like she'd gone in for a hug and I'd shoved her away.

"Don't look at me like that," I said.

"You wouldn't have let me do that to you," she said.

I looked through the sunroof at the garage ceiling. "Doesn't matter."

"So what now? Ms. I-Think-I-Can-Just-Do-Whatever-I-Want? What are we doing next?"

"Why are you being like that?"

"Does it matter?"

I mirrored her frown. "You don't really think I just do whatever I want?"

After a few silent moments, her face softened. "No."

"Let's go for a drive," I said.

"I don't want to. You can't look at me when you're driving."

"We're not going very far, I promise."

She twisted her mouth. "Okay. Fine. But I have to get Simon first."

"Britt—"

"I'll be right back."

"Seriously? We have, like… minutes." At her terrified face, I immediately backtracked. "Or hours. Not long, though. And you want to spend those minutes getting Simon."

"I'll never see him again, either. San, it'll take me ten seconds. Please."

I rolled my eyes. "Whatever."

It took her twenty three seconds before she was back with Simon, our fuzzy plush husky from the ancient 5 & 10 in the plaza a couple towns over that probably got more business now than before the apocalypse.

"That was more than ten seconds," I said.

She kissed my nose and tapped the garage door opener. And for a second we felt so normal I forgot what I'd just done, until I saw her hand twitch.

***Z***

I heaved the barely-there contents of my stomach into the grass as I leaned against the side of the building. The bricks were cool, having been in shadow for several hours now, and there was no one on the playground. No one had been on the playground for a long time. I coughed and spat before retching again.

A gentle hand rubbed slow circles on my lower back. I didn't have the energy to be surprised or indignant. I just leaned more of my body against the wall and let the brick catch on my shirt as I slid down a little.

"Hey," Brittany said softly, wrapping her arms around my waist and lifting me slightly back up. "Shh. Come on."

I shook my head as she tried to pull me upright. "I want to. I have to see him."

"It," she said.

"Him. He was a him."

She followed my gaze to the unmoving man face-up on the pavement not ten feet away. He was barely a zombie. He could have just eaten a really raw steak for all I knew, and been sprinting it off. But I'd… he'd… "He was a him," I said, more quietly this time.

"It was an it, and it's not anymore. Come on, honey." She turned me around, away from the bloody shovel on the ground trailing a dark smear back to the mauled head. Her eyes searched my face, trying to catch my gaze.

"I told you to wait in the car," I said.

"You don't have to pretend," she said.

"What are you talking about."

"It's just me. It's okay to be scared."

"I'm not," I lied.

She pushed my sweaty bangs back off my forehead and combed her fingers through my hair. Her eyes followed the path of her hand. "This isn't normal," she said. "You can be scared. I'm scared."

"I know," I said. "I'm here."

She smiled. "Yeah. Me too."

***Z***

"We're just going down to the lake," I said.

"We didn't have to drive."

"No, but then we wouldn't have music."

"Are we going to dance?"

"Do you want to dance?"

She smiled – an almost, nearly, so-close-to normal smile, that I almost, nearly forgot to be terrified. "Yes," she said.

"Okay," I said, catching myself returning the smile before I could even stop. "Me too."


	11. Chapter 11: The Beginning of the End

"I love this song."

"You're such a sap," Brittany said. She laughed softly and pulled me tighter as we swayed gently next to the lake in front of our house. "It's totally your favorite movie, too, isn't it."

"No."

"Mhm."

"Whatever."

"You have a thing for Idina Menzel."

"Yeah, well, chick can sing."

"She looks kind of like Rachel."

I pressed my face into her neck and inhaled the fresh air and baby powder clinging to her skin. Her throat vibrated as she hummed the chorus. Her skin against my cheek felt sticky.

"Please don't tell me not to cry," I whispered.

She tipped my chin up so she could look at me with the sweetest smile, and I saw she was crying, too.

***Z***

"But eggs are, like, baby chickens."

"No, not these," I said. "They didn't have chickens in them. Eat up, baby girl."

Brittany's beautiful blues clearly expressed her disbelief, but she took a bite of the omelette anyway.

I flipped my own veggie omelette over in the pan before pouring a glass of apple juice and sliding it across the counter to her.

"Can we make pancakes next time?" she said.

I snorted. "Not if you want to stay on the Cheerios." To be honest, pancakes and waffles scared the shit out of me. Mostly because Coach scared the shit out of me. So while normal people had cheat days once a week (or in Wheezy's case, every day of the year), I only got them once a month. And even then, when I put a little bit of cheddar in the eggs because I thought Coach could take her master cleanse and shove it, I got more nervous than the stupid breakfast was even worth.

Brittany pulled my legs into her lap when I sat down next to her and ran her thumbs up and down my shins, watching me carefully. "It's really good, San."

"Yeah, I know."

"It'll be fine."

"Says you," I eyed my plate with growing fear. "You can eat whatever you want and you always look like that anyway. It's not fair."

"I don't eat whatever I want," she said. "If I did we'd be having pancakes right now."

I smiled and picked some of the bell peppers out of the omelette.

"Eat it all together," she said.

"Yeah," I said weakly. The grease on the vegetables made my stomach flop unpleasantly.

"You must be dying for it. It's been, like, five weeks. It's just eggs, San, it's healthy."

"Not like this, it's not."

"You couldn't make it any healthier. Come on."

"Stop it," I said.

"You made it, aren't you going to eat it?"

I shoved my plate toward her and pulled my legs out of her grasp. "You love it so much, you eat it."

She frowned. "Coach isn't going to find out."

"Whatever." I jumped off my stool but she grabbed my wrist.

"Santana."

I sighed and turned back reluctantly. "It's just not fair, okay?"

She brushed her thumb over my cheekbone and smiled. "You're beautiful."

I scoffed and turned away, grabbing the pan off the stove on my way to the sink. "I know," I said. "I'm smokin' hot."

"Well, yeah," she said. I felt her behind me, and she put my plate on the counter next to me. "But you're beautiful, too."

"What's the difference?"

She forced me to drop the pan and sponge and turned me to face her. She had a fork in one hand with a bite of the omelette on it.

"Are you going to feed it to me?" I said sarcastically.

She nodded. "Open up."

"Brittany."

"Come on, open up."

I rolled my eyes. "This is stupid."

She just smiled disarmingly. "Do you want me to airplane it in?"

"God, I'm not a baby. I'll just do it myself." I made a grab for the fork, but she pulled it back out of my reach.

"Uh-uh," she said. "You don't always get to be in charge."

After a several-minute stare-off, I sighed heavily through my nose and dropped my jaw. She grinned and carefully brought the fork closer. I felt the heat of the eggs on my lips and my head twitched back. She paused, eyes never straying from mine, while I glanced back and forth between her baby blues and the fork so fast I thought I'd go cross-eyed. Finally, trembling slightly, I held my head still and let her slide the fork between my teeth. I stared at her, unmoving, trying desperately not to taste the salty cheese and the pepper and the sautéed mushrooms and onions. When I finally swallowed, my hands were shaking and I felt the familiar guilt rising like bile. Or maybe it was actual bile. But then she whispered, "I know it's not easy," and she looked so proud, that even though I was still shaking, I felt a little less sick so I let her pull me close and instead of breakfast all I could smell was her, all baby powder and bubble gum Lipsmackers and sex and salt, and that's when I realized she was crying, too.

***Z***

"Come on," she said.

"Where?"

"Nowhere."

And as the music swelled, she dragged me into a goofy waltz. I knew it could have been so graceful, and so Hollywood-picture-perfect, and some epic ending to something so beautiful. But she made every step larger than it had to be, acted the exaggerated gentleman, lifted me up for half a turn, and soon we found ourselves laughing. The choked kind, because tears don't just disappear, but her eyes sparkled with a joke and when my eyebrows shot up as my feet left the ground she giggled, and I couldn't stop staring.

_So close, so close, and still so far._

Tinkering chimes and soft strings played the song into silence.

Brittany stumbled a little and grabbed my shoulder to steady herself.

"Careful babe," I said, checking the ground to kick the stray rock or branch out of the way, but there was only packed sand beneath our feet. "You okay?"

She smiled as I searched her steel-blue eyes but came up with nothing. My chest contracted painfully, and I brushed my thumb just underneath her lashes.

"Hey," I said. But it was like staring into a soul-splitting void. "Britt-Britt?" My voice was a hoarse whisper. "Come back to me."

She blinked twice and pinched her eyebrows together.

I grabbed the back of her neck to pull myself up, resting my forehead against hers, staring as powerfully as I could into her eyes. It was like looking at steel wool. I kissed her desperately, as if passion could transfuse my life into her for just a few more moments. "Please," I choked out.

"I'm right here," she said, and then she was, almost as though she'd never left.

"Your eyes," I said.

"Yeah?"

"Nothing. Never mind. I love you."

She kissed me softly. "I love you too. Want to play it again?" She drifted toward the car, but I pulled her back, flush against my body.

"Don't leave me," I whispered into her chest.

"I'm not going anywhere," she said.

"Yes you are."

"Well… so are you, though, right?" she reasoned,

"Not at the same speed," I said.

"Can we play the song again?"

"Sure," I said.

"Where are you going?"

I opened the back of the truck. "Nowhere," I said, unzipping the side pocket of our duffel of guns. I pulled out a tiny jewelry box. "Do you want some apple juice while I'm back here?" I coughed a little to hide the tremor in my voice.

"Yes," she said, so I pulled a loose blue Solo cup out from underneath the blanket we never took out of the car, even when we moved into the house. With shaking hands, I popped open the box and stared at it. I jumped forward when I felt her arms around my waist, accidentally slamming my knee into the trailer hitch. I hissed out a curse as she pressed her cheek to mine. "What's that?" she said, reaching for the box.

The empty box.

I swallowed hard and glanced in her cup; the bottom was coated in a thin layer of powder. The rest dusted the floor of the car.

"Nothing," I said, hastily pouring her juice and turning in her arms to place a soft kiss on her nose and hand her the cup. "Here."

"Santana?" She turned the little black box in her fingers and tilted her head questioningly.

I smiled sadly and pulled it out of her grasp, dropping it back in the duffel bag. "I would have married you, you know," I said.

"I know," she said, as if it were simultaneously the most obvious and the most unexpected thing in the world. And in her voice I heard everything, but in her dulling eyes I saw nothing.

"Drink up, baby girl," I whispered.

"Share with me," she said, and I knew she knew.

"I've got one too," I said and held up my own cup.

"It tastes bad." She wrinkled her nose and scraped her tongue against her teeth.

I sipped and pulled a face to mirror hers. "Yeah," I said, downing the rest of my sweet apple juice. "I'm sorry."


	12. Chapter 12: Right Here

"I'm sorry I couldn't fix it," I said.

She just nestled her head comfortably against my shoulder and looped her pinky through mine. We'd been sitting on the sparse grass just above the beach since dancing was no longer an option, as Brittany was getting frustrated to tears by the fact that she kept tripping over nothing. I'd kissed away the tracks on her cheeks and told her I was tired anyway and wrapped her in the blanket with me to stare at the lake.

Brittany stretched a stiff leg out to reach the edge of the sand and began pushing it around with her foot. My foot drifted over to hers, but she nudged my leg back with her knee. "Don't wreck it," she said.

"Are you making the Hollywood Hills?"

She smiled. "No."

"What is it?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. But don't wreck it."

I stared at her face, trying to soak it all in so I could keep her blue eyes and light lashes and freckled nose with me for… for what? I wondered.

Her pinky on mine loosened and I gripped it desperately. She looked up at me, and her eyes were steelier than I remembered.

"Britt-Britt?" I whispered.

"Yeah?" she said, and it was so innocent and full of concern that I realized she didn't even know how fast it was all happening.

When I didn't respond, she looked back down at her foot, pushing the cold sand into uneven mounds and pits. "You're scared," she said.

"No."

She raised her eyebrow in that look that had always said _don't-even-try-to-lie-to-me_. Then finally she said, "What do you think is next?"

I shrugged and her head bobbed on my shoulder. She shifted to get comfortable again. "Sorry," I said.

"It might hurt, though, right?"

"No," I said. "It'll be just like going to sleep. Easy as pie."

"Pie is super hard, though."

"Easy as eating pie, then."

She smiled. "Strawberry rhubarb?"

"Sure," I said. "Like on the Fourth of July."

"Do you think they have fireworks?"

"Who?"

"I don't know—whoever…" she waved her hand vaguely at the horizon.

"Probably. The willow tree ones."

"Those are my favorite."

"They're _my _favorite," I teased.

"That's why they're mine. They remind me of you. And the top of the party boat in the middle of the lake on the Fourth of July."

I smiled. I used to make a football freshman drive Karofsky's dad's old-ass hard-top party boat around the lake every Fourth of July party—I let the kid touch my boobs in exchange for not stopping the boat or coming up top, and then Britt and I would climb the ladder and lie down and alternate between making out and watching early fireworks from the kids' summer camps along the beaches.

"Too bad we don't have a boat now," I said.

"Or fireworks."

"Guess it doesn't really matter."

She frowned, searching my eyes, and leaned in and kissed me. It was everything it ever was – and then something more. Something foreign, distinctly un-Brittany, in taste, and I felt my heart contract sharply.

"You're crying again," she said softly, pulling back only far enough to fit her thumbs between our faces and wipe my cheeks.

"Uh-huh," I barely whispered. "Babe, I love you, but…"

Her eyes panicked and she tried to pull away, but I grabbed the back of her neck and rested my forehead against hers, smiling to reassure her.

"I love you," I said again, choking on the words, "but you really need to brush your teeth."

It was the last time I heard her laugh.

"You would say something like that right now," she teased. "Do you think they'll have toothbrushes?"

I just shrugged because I couldn't find any words.

"I'm tired," she said.

And I panicked. A nasty inner voice sneered, _Isn't this what you wanted?_ "No, just—just stay with me, okay? Just a little bit."

"Mmkay." She closed her eyes.

"Britt-Britt, stay with me," I patted her cheek gently. "Brittany. Please."

"I'm right here, San," she mumbled.

And then she was unmoving, and it was so sudden that I felt cheated. We were supposed to have more time. She wasn't supposed to just go off into a drugged coma and disappear on me forever. There was supposed to be a sunset, and birds—there would be birds flying—and I should be able to see my breath in the air, and we'd both be crying and kissing and there'd be final tearful I-love-yous…

But the sun was low but not setting.

And there might have been a couple geese or ducks way across the lake, but I wasn't looking.

And it wasn't nearly cold enough to see my breath.

And her eyes were shut and dry, her lips barely parted.

Like she was sleeping.

And, I guess, for all intents and purposes, she was.

It was all wrong, but I pulled her impossibly close to me and sobbed into her neck until my own limbs started feeling stiff and sore and she started smelling less like baby powder and fresh air and more like salt. And that's when I remembered I'd spilled what would have slipped me gently away, too, and I looked beyond the white powder in the back of the car to the duffel bag with a barrel peeking out of the open zipper.

In a minute. My joints screamed as I shifted. Without her I was suddenly hyperaware of me, and I didn't like it, but I couldn't just… in a minute.

I settled down, pulling her still, cooling body close again. For now this would be it.

Because for now, it was quiet. For now, it was just the two of us. It was always the two of us.


End file.
